Sentinel events arise in everyone’s personal history like a volcano in the middle of a barren plain – obvious and undeniable. I was taking a music composition course in the bell tower on the quadrangle at the University of Michigan when President Kennedy was shot. As the giant bells inexplicably began to toll, the date and time were etched forever in my memory. While an intern at Yale-New Haven Hospital, I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon from the house staff break room. And on an otherwise ordinary morning in September 2001, I watched, horrified, a small TV screen in my office in Murphy as the Twin Towers fell.

As critical as each of those moments were in our nation’s history, we are now witnessing an event of much greater significance to the future of America and generations to come. Our legislators in Washington are entangled in debate about our national debt, a runaway train out of control, while the debt ceiling looms like a steel blockade at the end of the line.

Forget blame. It’s immaterial. Our national decline began when, in complete contravention to the Constitution and the accumulated knowledge of the founders, our government took money away from one group of citizens and gave it to another to buy votes and increase power. Emboldened by the lack of public outrage, the governing class continues to solidify its hegemony by creating a power base of willing recipients who have both voting rights and zero liability.

Instead of making hard choices based on principle, members of congress, with few exceptions, concoct legislative schemes that balance dollars saved against votes lost in an effort to ensure re-election rather than the fiscal solvency of our nation. In essence, we are participants in a circus high wire act without a net. As our rulers carefully inch across the abyss below, we must understand that our nation can only survive if they fall.

The provisions in our Constitution designed to protect our freedoms and Natural Law rights have been circumvented and ignored by those who would enslave us all under the guise of saving humanity from itself. Congress has become nothing more than a spineless rubber stamp doing the bidding of this self-anointed ruling class of elitist intellectuals and financial power brokers who desire to leave us with only the illusion of freedom while protecting their own self interests.

In 1775, the leaders of the colony of Virginia met secretly in Richmond. Present were Thomas Jefferson, the pen of the revolution, Patrick Henry, the voice of the revolution, and George Washington, the sword of the revolution. Some wanted to beg and appease King George again for relief and justice.

That is when Patrick Henry stood up and proclaimed, “I know not what course others may take, but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”

The battle over the Debt Ceiling is the sentinel event of our generation.

If Congress capitulates on this issue, only True Patriots will be left to fight for our personal liberties and the American way of life.

It seems that the most fundamental precepts of the Constitution have been forgotten. The government derives no power from itself, but rather is granted a limited lease of authority from the people they serve. Our great country was founded on the principle that government should be by the consent of the governed.

We the people cannot be adequately represented by a corrupt and tyrannical government serving its own interests. If we have lost our representation, how much longer shall we extend our consent to be governed?

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